Woody Hastings: 65 years of fun

John Woodland (Woody) Hastings, Paul C. Mangelsdorf Professor of Natural Sciences and Professor Emeritus, Harvard University, died at home on August 6, 2014 after a long battle with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. He was 87. To those who worked with Woody, he was a personality larger than life. Woody infected those around him with his love of science, his curiosity, and his view that although what we do is of critical importance, it is not work but fun. Woody’s professional life, his personal life, and his hobbies were a jumble to be mixed and enjoyed. The title of this Retrospective is an update of a lecture he gave in 2000 at the meeting of the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms, entitled “Fifty Years of Fun” (1). Woody had a reciprocal loyalty to his mentees: all caring deeply about each other’s professional and personal lives. This was encapsulated in the last emails from Woody to one of us (E.P.G.) just a few weeks before his death: “What is the correct and detailed story of the term ‘quorum sensing’ and may I use it in a lecture? Breathless as I am.” And of course he added, “I am sorry to hear that your daughter is still having a hard time; where is she living?” Woody Hastings (1927–2014). Photo courtesy of E. Peter Greenberg. After graduating from Swarthmore College in 1947, Woody taught biology at lycée in France and worked on postwar reconstruction in Germany. He returned to the United States to complete a doctorate at Princeton, where …